In which I explore, come home, bake bread, read book.

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In process with the Betsy-Tacy quilt.

I was sitting here yesterday on the little sofa in the front window. The front window is a big plate-glass window that looks east, over the street, and I’ve been bringing the Betsy-Tacy quilt here to hand-tie in the mornings. I can hear the birds calling and responding as the light creeps up behind the buildings across the street. Yesterday, as I sat here and worked, a hummingbird came to rest upon one of the tallest boughs of our weeping willow outside the window. And she just rested. Many of our hummingbirds have rufous heads and breasts and bright green bodies but she was dark-headed and grayish-bodied and she just sat and bobbed on the slender, bending bough. Benjamin came to sit on the arm of the sofa behind me, snuggled into my neck, and watched her too.

I’ve been working on this quilt and thinking about the next. I am really enjoying the literature interpretations as quilts; there is something thoughtful about them, as though something outside of me is telling me how to get them right, and finding a way to do this is like completing a satisfying puzzle. The one I’m working on right now is just a charm quilt, random pieces 3″ square, and I had planned to quilt it in some way–perhaps as a map of the town where the girls live, or perhaps a simple grid–on the sewing machine. It would be done faster, certainly. And I even began doing it. But the quilt argued with me. It was actually kind of painful to quilt on the machine. This quilt wanted to be tied. It was an old-fashioned quilt dedicated to a simple, old-fashioned heroine and it wanted a very simple finish. This is not to say an easy one–my fingers have felt bruised for days! But it’s gentler, somehow. I’m not throwing the machine at it. I’m touching each piece, remembering how much I liked that fabric, smoothing a square, making sure the tie is secure, moving on. Playing games with the pattern I make with the embroidery floss before I snip it into short lengths. I know, it’s kind of silly. I mean, it’s layers of cloth; aren’t I in charge? And why not do it in a way that is faster and in the end may even be more sturdy? Why be doing it at all?

I have to respect the wishes of the fabric because the fabric has taken on a life of its own, and it is connected to and mindful of its origins in the work of Maud Hart Lovelace. These little squares are my thoughts: wouldn’t Betsy have worn these two together as a blouse and a skirt? This one would have looked lovely as a shirtwaist on Tacy with her red hair. What about this one as a part of Betsy’s sister’s clothes for Europe? And once they took on these connections, I had to be led where it would take me. I suppose this is part of that tenuous art/craft boundary.

But why do it at all? I sit here in the window as light begins to flood me and my project and I feel the cat snuggled in my lap under the quilt and see my Boy curled up under the completed quilt at the far end of the little sofa and I get angry, a little, at this question. I do it because it needs to be done. My fingers are doing what so many fingers have done for so long, find meaning in the base and the needful, interpret creatively what could be merely an animal skin. I respect the maker’s impulse, the push to bring out from the heart or the deep interior frontal cortex through the fingers and into the world. That means no shortcuts for the sake of shortness, because that means missing out on some part of the process that feels like it needs to be there. If I set the parameters of my project, whatever they may be and however arbitrary they may seem, I can only then respect them and go where they take me. To not respect them is to disrespect myself and the validity of my impulse to make.

This is where I don’t accidentally pour tea all over the quilt and computer.

Days with Geeklet: What We’re Reading

Me: I’ve got a list going of books I want to read or re-read. I started it earlier in the year, when I was revisiting Jasper Fforde’s Thursday Next series. I found myself itching to read the books mentioned in Thursday’s adventures, but was torn as to whether I would put in a bookmark and read the book mentioned every time I was bit by this bug, or wait until I was done, but had possibly forgotten an important one. I started a list, and after I’d finished the last Thursday book I started the first on my list. Of course, as the first Thursday book is The Eyre Affair, the first book to read was Jane Eyre.

I’d read it before. The first time was in high school, back when I fell in love with nineteenth century British literature. It had been a very long time, however, and I hadn’t remembered how funny this book is! Jane is straightforward and honest, somewhat serious, and a wee bit snarky. Edward Rochester is not handsome, and St. John Rivers is absolutely annoying. Most of the women were well-drawn, complex characters rather than morality tales made flesh. I was quite tempted to begin it again right away. However, the second book on my list was waiting.

Actually, the second book on my list was Poe’s “The Raven.” Can you count a poem as a book? Never mind. Anyway, I reread it and again was transported. I lost track of whatever was going on around me and floated on the rhythm of the poem, as though I lay in the bottom of a boat at night, moved by the water. I was, again, really torn about my list, because all I could think was to find a Poe collection and bury myself in it. (No pun intended, really.)

But the next book was waiting and I’d never read it before. Bleak House, by Charles Dickens. Oh my, when I requested it from the library I had no idea of the tome that awaited me. Nearly 1,000 pages. Several points of view. Parallel character development. Death. Love. Murder. It took me nearly 700 pages to care. I’d never lasted that long into a book I couldn’t get into. Somehow, being on my list gave Bleak House weight (more so even than its chunky dimensions), and I was determined to finish it out, even if finishing it out was itself as long as many other novels. Still, by the end, I did care what happened, to Jo, and Sir Leicester, and Mr. George, and Ada, and mostly Esther. Even though the way the court case ended was the only way it could have ended. And I can see myself re-reading in the not-so-far future. It grew on me.

I’m now on the next book on the list, another Dickens, Great Expectations. This one I’ve read before, but long enough ago that I don’t remember any specifics except for Miss Havisham and the scene at the beginning of the book with the convict. It’s funnier and has more “sparkle”, in a way, than Bleak House, but I don’t care as much about it as I did Bleak House by the end. Perhaps I will when I reach its end? Either way, I’ll be glad to move on to something that isn’t Dickens for a while. Still, this one is interesting in that my understanding of social laws and circumstances during early nineteenth century London come in handy. The industrial revolution, the way children were treated, laws regarding women and convicts and debt, the social/penal policy of deporting, have all been important and I can’t imagine reading this (or Bleak House either) without some understanding of them.

Geeklet: The boy’s been reading a lot of comics, of course, old favorites like Peanuts, Bloom County, and Garfield, and new, like the Beaver Brothers books and the Skylanders series. I finally got him to try Jasper Fforde’s The Last Dragonslayer and he devoured it and its sequels and then went back and reread them. I’m so glad he enjoyed them! There’s a very satisfying feeling that comes with a successful recommendation. He’s recently read and enjoyed the first Artemis Fowl book, as well as Eva Ibbotson’s Island of the Aunts, Which Witch?, and Platform 13.

Together, we’ve made our way through quite a few of Louisa May Alcott’s books: Little Women, Little Men, Jo’s Boys, Eight Cousins, and Rose in Bloom were all declared “very good.” Since then, we’ve been re-reading Arthur Ransome’s Swallows and Amazons series, trying to figure out where in Britain each book has taken place and planning to someday visit the locations. I try not to be overwhelmed by the amount of independence and personal authority these children have, as the books were set in the 1930s and have, for example, four children under the age of 14 camping and sailing for days on end, only seeing any adult at all once each day when they go for the milk to put in their tea. The opportunity for such independence for G just doesn’t exist in my world, presently, and it’s always in the back of my head to wonder how to find it.